It may be fruitless to worry about the cost of the Tuning Adapter as my complaints will fall on deaf ears at CableVision. But for those who think it will be just a nominal charge, I point out that if it were $1/month - which would make it the cheapest thing they lease this side of the remote, and if the speculation is correct that it's about a $30 item retail, that's a huge 40&#37; return on CV's investment, before you account for their bulk purchasing discounts and potential lease financing.

As for my "choices" in switching to other sources of programming, it's not like there's a freely operating market here. There are still huge barriers to entry, and that's being exploited. It's moved from an under-regulated monopoly to a thinly regulated oligopoly. It's why the cost of programming has shot through the roof, and remains there, and it's why we're forced to lease hardware.

I would love to be a happy premium subscriber. Instead, I'm a premium subscriber who's sick of paying through the nose. I pay $105 for cable service per month now, and I'm gradually losing the ability to see what I want where I want without leasing more hardware. I should be enjoying CV and FIOS fighting for my business in the $50/month range, without hardware restrictions. But their oligopoly status combined with an accepted price level that's jacked up beyond reason has prevented that.

danschn, no matter what the cable providers profit margin is, it would be difficult to argue that $1/month would be unreasonable lease fee. They will have to pay something to stock, distribute and maintain the damn things and they deserve some compensation should they ask for it. I'm not sure what the highest reasonable price would be, but I'm definitely not going to complain about anything under $2/month. They could have not developed the device at all--the solution that the CE OEMs are asking for, DCR+, is only applicable to future products. It leaves all us current-model CableCARD TiVo owners out in the cold.

Cable has to combat the incursions that satellite is making on their market share with their "up to 150 HD channels" advertising campaigns. SDV was by far the quickest-to-implement, least-expensive way for them to be able to field enough additional HD content to remain competitive, and it screws over only their unidirectional CableCARD using subs, who to date number only a few hundred thousand, nationwide. Of that tiny fraction of all cable subscribers, I'd bet that CableCARD TiVo users comprise greater than 50&#37;, and the TA should immediately solve our problem with SDV.

Sounds as though your only recourse is to drop cable and be satisfied with the programming that you can pick up over-the-air (which TiVo S3 and TiVo HD are also useful for); many people go that route. The oligopoly status quo is an improvement on the de facto monopoly situation of the past and will only continue to improve. Unfortunately, because of the incredibly high cost of building a content distribution network (municipal hybrid fiber/cable network build-out, launching comm satellites, etc), there won't soon be anything like the open market that exists in other areas for multichannel subscription television. What may well happen is that IPTV blossoms, which will allow individual content providers to sell you access to individual channels over a broadband internet connection, basically piggy-backing someone else's distribution network, your choice (CATV, telco, whatever) as long as it's fast enough. (See this page for a cool video about deployment of an IPTV client for the Xbox 360 set to be rolled out in the UK soon; Sony will also be rolling out their "PlayTV" client and DVB tuner for the PS3 in Europe soon). This is something that current model CableCARD TiVos should be capable of handling as well. Only time will tell how that's going to go, or whether it will sell for a price that you won't feel obliged to complain about .

Or maybe bicker and mike_camden can agree to disagree, skipping a long, protracted, off-topic and useless argument in this thread and just tell people that they had one . (Or, if they must have it, move it to PM and spare the rest of us).

Right now for this particular matter, reality is being defined by the influence that a very strong lobby has on politicians (including judges) who don't have the technical acumen or desire (both in many cases) to fully understand the issues involved.

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Or they simply have different priorities than you, and theirs simply prevail over yours. In essence, they're pro-business.

Continue to trump how this is just the reality that we need to accept, and stand by to see more of your options go away.

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You give me way too much credit. I'm just explaining to you what you claim is so obvious that you cannot help but know it. It is real. Denying it by claiming that you don't like the way it came about doesn't serve any constructive purpose. What are you doing to change the nature of the politics in this country that this reality is a reflection of? Evidently not enough, since both of the major political parties are pro-business now.

Think I am being too much of an alarmist? Look into some of the recent trends of Comcast and TWC experimenting with charging Internet fees based on usage tiers. These companies look for those affected to remain as lemmings; without the people speaking out, these companies will remain the only ones with leverage.

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You're tilting at windmills. What I care about is that my investments are such that I can hope to enjoy a comfortable retirement. I support the things that I believe foster that. What are you doing to to get the powers-that-be to radically reverse the last 35 years of progressively more and more support for the pro-business perspective in this country? Again, evidently not enough.

And I'm not saying that that's bad (though I'm happy that it fosters my 401k's), and I'm not saying it is a personal failure on your part: I'm just stating the way things are.

Or maybe bicker and mike_camden can agree to disagree, skipping a long, protracted, off-topic and useless argument in this thread and just tell people that they had one . (Or, if they must have it, move it to PM and spare the rest of us).

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I'm game. I've said all there needs to be said to support my position, as long as there isn't another personal attack on me posted in this regard, like another accusation that I was talking to someone like an elementary school student.

These companies look for those affected to remain as lemmings; without the people speaking out, these companies will remain the only ones with leverage.

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I agree with most of what you have said, up to this point. The fact is, every person on Eath - all six billion plus - could scream at the top of their lungs about this issue, and the CATV companies couldn't care less. All six billion of them writing letters would only garner a little more notice. No, the only things of which the MSOs are going to take much notice is either a major loss of revenue or potentially massive fines from the FCC. The loss of one customer is definitely not a major loss of revenue. The loss of every single Series 3 customer is perhaps a bit on their radar, but even that is comparatively small potatoes. As others have pointed out, we (TiVo owners) just don't have much clout. We have a bit more than some have estimated, but it would not be at all difficult to overestimate the magnitude of our potential influence. All of us put together probably couldn't match in a year the amount of bribes paid by the MSOs in a single day, so I wouldn't hold much stock in convincing the government of anything, either.

Yes, but the U.S. Constitution is not a relevant aspect of that environment. I submit your arguments will wield more weight if you keep them cogent and free of detritus.

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Your welcome to your opinion, even though it doesn't actually add anything constructive to the discussion, and instead just fosters a hostile environment where attacking what individual posters say and how they say it is the norm, instead of keeping to the topic yourself.

And I won't get on you about how irrelevant the other 5 billion 700 thousand people in the world, who you were discussing in your last message, are to what we're discussing in this thread.

I agree with most of what you have said, up to this point. The fact is, every person on Eath - all six billion plus - could scream at the top of their lungs about this issue, and the CATV companies couldn't care less.

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Yeah, that was a little over the top. I just kind of became carried away in the moment

I believe you'll find that this is not the case, at least not in the context of the discussion. The point was that TiVo, itself, is not protected, while access to competitive marketplaces is.

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No, it isn't, which is why your point is not taken at all. The U.S. Constitution says nothing about commercial interests or marketplaces. The closest it comes is giving Congress control over patents and copyrights (Article I, section 8, part 8) and forbidding any interstate taxation or restrictions on interstate trading (Article I, section 9, parts 4 and 5). Unless one counts the phrase "...promote the general welfare," in the preamble, not one word in the Constitution mentions internal commerce, trading, marketplaces, competition, or economics, and nothing in the Constitution seeks to protect access to marketplaces of any sort: free, competitive, or otherwise. Its relevance to the discussion at hand is zero, no matter how wide you make it, unless you start talking about taxation and trade or treaty restrictions with foreign powers.

even though it doesn't actually add anything constructive to the discussion

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I submit it does, although of course I admit it did not address the elements under debate, but rather the form of the debate. No matter what some people believe (and I am not saying you are necessarily one of them) obfuscation and hand-waving add nothing to a debate. Indeed, in my opinion they severely impair the argument of whoever employs them, deliberately or not. I am not an official debate scorekeeper, but if I were I would severely dock points from those whose arguments deviate from being cogent.

Look, I disagree with lhorer vehemently and often, but he's right this time around. Your silly crap about the Constitution and its status regarding cable service guarantees is ridiculous, useless, and smacks of a baseless assumption of superiority. I don't know if you ride a garbage truck for a living or sit on SCOTUS itself, but either way you're pushing silly s**t into the discussion for no discernible reason. Please stop pretending it's helpful or relevant or adds anything worthwhile to the discussion. It isn't, it doesn't, and you only make yourself look all the more silly every time you dig yourself further into your bunker on it.

I agree with most of what you have said, up to this point. The fact is, every person on Eath - all six billion plus - could scream at the top of their lungs about this issue, and the CATV companies couldn't care less. All six billion of them writing letters would only garner a little more notice. No, the only things of which the MSOs are going to take much notice is either a major loss of revenue or potentially massive fines from the FCC. The loss of one customer is definitely not a major loss of revenue. The loss of every single Series 3 customer is perhaps a bit on their radar, but even that is comparatively small potatoes. As others have pointed out, we (TiVo owners) just don't have much clout. We have a bit more than some have estimated, but it would not be at all difficult to overestimate the magnitude of our potential influence. All of us put together probably couldn't match in a year the amount of bribes paid by the MSOs in a single day, so I wouldn't hold much stock in convincing the government of anything, either.

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I think if every person on Earth screamed, someone would notice. Some places are, for example, experiencing high prices for rice and corn right now. They cannot afford to eat anymore. That actually made world news. (Well, BBC News anyway. The news shown at the networks at 6:30 isn't really world news.) But you are right -- the screams of 0.2% of CableCard users (actual number in my DMA) will be drowned out by the screams of the other 99.8% of cable subscribers who want to know why more channels aren't in HD yet.

Many people are also complaining about high gas prices. You know, the same people who bought trucks and SUVs when they never carry anything else except themselves. Or those people who chose to live in a house that was an hour drive from work (or vice versa). And yet they do nothing else about it except complain.

The point is, if someone doesn't like what his cable company is doing, he should cancel their service! Who cares if the cable company notices or not? And don't buy a product that is exclusively designed to work with them. Save the money for gas, or use the money to buy food for someone else.

And if someone thinks non-network TV is really a necessity, and that a DVR is really a necessity, and he can't put up a satellite dish or wants to use one specific specialized DVR, then he should move to a different place where he can. It's a buyer's market in housing right now. But beware -- people are complaining they can only get a loan if they have good credit and only for houses they can actually afford.

(Well, BBC News anyway. The news shown at the networks at 6:30 isn't really world news.)

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oops leetist backfire there, which was so snobbish as to make me comment,

ABC world news has very much been following the World Food crisis with in depth reports on what and why around rice and corn that have been aired 2 or 3 times a week for the past few weeks. In a word you are wrong.